When Google March 10 launched check-in deals from its Google Latitude application for the duration of the popular South By Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas, it signaled to fellow Web service providers Foursquare, Facebook and Yahoo that it planned to have a dog in the local deals race that Groupon and LivingSocial are running away with at present. Google launched check-ins for its Google Latitude friend-finding application to help users share places they pop into with friends from their Android smartphones. Adding some gamesmanship to the practice, Google partnered with more than 60 businesses to give incentives to consumers who check in to local shops from Google Latitude using their handsets. What better place to do this than at SXSW, which for more than a week becomes a cultural mecca of music, film, art and tech for the digerati? While these check-in deals were targeted for the Austin event, Google watchers should regard them as a blueprint for the company's local deal plans going forward. Google also needs to offer these deals for the iPhone, the other popular smartphone platform in the U.S. In this slide show, eWEEK samples some of the places for which Latitude was offering check-in deals. This might give Latitude users a taste of what Google might have in store for local deals across the country.

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Latitude Check-Ins

Here are Google's clear instructions for checking in and claiming deals. After all, the incentive isn't enough; the deals have to be easy to claim to boost transactions.